Taming the Irascible within and without

San Mateo County Bar AssociationFamily Law Section

April 9, 2010

Sherry Cassedy, J.D. Matt Sullivan, PhD.

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• “High levels of effective practice and low levels of associated stress were consistently associated with firm role definitions and boundaries, thorough education of clients, standardized office protocols and a highly organized filing system”

• “One respondent noted the intensity of dealing with alternative realities existing simultaneously and the resulting need to set a firm line of demarcation to return to their own world and have adequate time away to restore perspective”• Kirkland, K. “Coping strategies for Parenting Coordinators” Journal of Child Custody, vol. 7,

2010

Managing the “cyberspace” part of your practice

• The “crackberry” phenomenon, being connected, creating expectations of total availability to clients (by them and you)

• Boundaries – non-work hours, weekends, vacations

• The burden of email– Charging for email time

On-line Threats to your practice

Parenting coordination is a made-up, make-work field that has been invented by bottom-feeding extraneous “professionals" who have literally reproduced like bacteria in the family court system.

Liz Library

• Folks who are out to destroy your ability to practice– Generally – Liz Library, advocacy groups– Specifically – Yelp, other consumer-based feedback

about professional service websites• Your professional and personal use of social

networking– Don’t mix: facebook page? client, professionals– Permanent record

Your website

• Please enter the 21st century• Description of services• Service forms• Announcements/news• Resources for professionals and clients• Networking, Marketing, practice support• Protection

• What do prospective clients find when the “Google” you?

Setting Boundaries with Clients• Relationships are governed by”rules”• Structuring the Relationship– Defining the rules

• Knowing the Client– Client Role– Client Psychology

• Knowing Oneself– Professional Role– Personal Psychology

Managing the Professional Relationship between you and your client

• Defining the relationship– Office, intake forms, fees, dress, hours, access

• What is your professional role?– Role expectations in yourself (MSW, Romance, victim’s

advocate)– Role expectations in your client (savior, counselor, winning)

• Policies and Procedures– Providing behavioral specificity to the role– Setting expectations for both– Depersonalizing limit setting– Touching base with parameters

Boundary issues

• Faulty rules - how you define your professional role

• Failure to manage and maintain rules - violations

The client’s stuff

• Focus on own needs• Difficulty taking another’s perspective• Reality is their own point of view• Hypersensitive to criticism• Sense of entitlement• Often long standing, maladaptive ways of

thinking, feeling and behaving - Axis II

Thinking Errors

• Inaccurate perceptions• Distorts, misinterprets information• Poor reality testing, i.e. thinking errors

including errors of perception, misattribution, and misinterpretation

• Sometimes rigid, simplistic assessments

Your Stuff

• How do your thoughts, feelings and behaviors effect your definition of and behavior in the role?

Countertransference • Intense emotions, familiar patterns • Unconscious, blind spots• Distortion of the meaning of the client’s behavior

Boundary Challenges

• Pulls – Idealization, need, celebrity, $, friendship,

romance• Pushes– Devaluation, demand, threat, criticism,

questioning

Strategies for managing boundaries

• Explicit, detailed policies and procedures as a tool to check boundaries

• “slippage” - availability, fees,• Limit setting, training your client– What Aikido tells us

• Managing energy– What behavioral theory tells us

• Clearly defined expectations of behavior• Consistent response, your posture, modeling• Timely response• Staying in control• depersonalize

Getting in and Getting out

• Factors to consider in taking a case– Within scope of competence– Type of case and fit with professional and personal

goals• Red flags

– The intake - client characteristics, attorneys– Patterns of clientele • Say as much about you as them

When to get out

• Slippage in boundaries with unsuccessful efforts to work within parameters

• Threats, abuse, boundary violations, consultation suggests you should end

• How to get out - abandonment and retaliation

Personal and Professional Support

• Knowledge of standards of professional practice

• Continuing education • Peer consultation - professional role• Counseling - personal psychology

• Why is this work in high conflict cases so intense?

• Working with difficult clients in a difficult situation– Expectation, “tolerance” and working with challenging

client behavior

• The client’s stuff• Depending on Narcissistic Vulnerability

– Distortions based on Axis-II, loss/stress of situation– Projection/projective identification

• Your stuff• Your role in the case – Neutral/aligned• Personal stuff: Punitive, Withdraw, overwhelmed (caught like the

child)

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• The Interactional stuff• Between professional and client, client and client, professional and

professional

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• The Contextual stuff• Working in the legal-adversarial context• Tribal dynamics – extended family, professionals